$100M Starwood site project stalls, data centers targeted

Developers of the former Starwood Amphitheater site are shifting gears to appeal to data centers, one of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce’s prime targets for the next decade.

Nashville-based Vastland Companies purchased the 65-acre Antioch site in 2007 for $4.2 million. The next year, Vastland announced a pre-sales and leasing initiative for Starwood Commons, a $100 million retail and residential development. Original plans called for 421,000 square feet of retail space and 250 attached townhomes.

With national retailers hit hard by the recession, however, the project never found a major anchor tenant.

Owner Mack McClung has since taken an “everything-on-the-table” approach.

The entire property is currently listed for sale on LoopNet, a major commercial real estate listing site. In addition to marketing the property for sale, brokers with the Nashville office of CB Richard Ellis continue the hunt for tenants.

“We looked at the site and said, ‘What can we capitalize on this site that makes it unique?’” McClung said.

Jim Morris, a senior vice-president at CB Richard Ellis who is representing the property with fellow broker Paul Gaither, said the property is ideally suited for a data center, large buildings that store a companies’ computer servers and telecommunications systems to hedge against disasters or other disruptions.

Morris said the site is appealing because it is served by three power stations, is located near an interstate and sits outside of flight paths.

McClung has been working with the Chamber and the Tennessee Valley Authority as part of a program surveying potential data-center sites in the seven-state TVA region.

Judith Hill, director of existing business for the Chamber, said going through the program will allow the chamber to quickly provide information to potential data center users. “It’s all about speed to market,” she said.

Though other Davidson County properties were submitted for consideration, they were eliminated for not meeting the strict site requirements of data centers. Another site in Murfreesboro, however, made the cut.

Hill said data centers are a target sector for the Chamber’s Partnership 2020 program, largely because of the high-paying jobs they bring. Industry website Data Center Map lists eight data centers in the Nashville area, including a NuVox center that opened on Third Avenue North in July 2009.

Wood Caldwell, a principal with Nashville real estate services firm Southeast Venture, said he thought McClung’s original plans were “perfect” for the site, but he also said the site is well-suited for a data center.

“It’s a very noninvasive use,” Caldwell said, as such sites don’t require tall buildings or parking lots that might clash with the surrounding neighborhood.

Morris said rezoning would likely be necessary to land a data center, but didn’t expect hurdles in getting that approval from the Metro Council.